


thread of gold

by sadlikeknives



Category: Hidden Legacy Series - Ilona Andrews
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:02:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28185810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadlikeknives/pseuds/sadlikeknives
Summary: Alessandro had had it drilled into him since he was a child: the mark did not matter
Relationships: Catalina Baylor/Alessandro Sagredo
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	thread of gold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [charlietinpants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/charlietinpants/gifts).



Alessandro had had it drilled into him since he was a child: the mark did not matter. The mark meant nothing. He must marry for the good of his House; the mark was only any good if there was some wealthy Catalina--ideally one with magic, even better if it was Mental magic, but they would settle for what they could get--that they could hook irrevocably with it.

It was for the best, he was told. His mother had married her soulmate, and look what it had gotten her. Better to be practical, to wed for the good of the House. Occasionally, his mother would unbend from her grief enough, hope for the happiness of her child enough to suggest that his match might be a platonic one, but neither of them really believed it.

Still, when he received the call from the Records Keeper of the state of Texas...he agreed to the request immediately, of course; it would get him out of this mausoleum of a house and this miserable excuse for a Christmas. Even as the words leapt from his mouth, he was already calculating how to spin it to his grandfather as an honor for their family, and the different spin to use with his mother and sisters to explain his early departure, when he spent so little--as little as possible--time at home these days. At least it wasn't a job he'd leapt at. At least that. Another part of his brain was occupied with the implications of the young woman being tested's power, if it was, indeed, what it seemed to be. To be able to make someone love you was a terrible gift; how would you ever know if the emotion was real?

The arrangements were being wrapped up when he finally thought to ask, "The young lady I will be testing, does she have a name?" There was a pause on the line, and he added, "Simply curious."

"Of course, I forgot to mention. The candidate being tested is Catalina Baylor."

 _Catalina_.

He finished the call on autopilot and returned to the funereal family dinner he'd left to take it. "I will have to leave earlier than I'd planned, I'm afraid," he said as he took his seat again and picked up his knife and fork for his cold chicken (at least they could afford chicken these days). "I have been asked to take part in the trial of a possible Prime in the United States."

"Hmph. What sort of Prime?" his grandfather asked, which was better than railing that Alessandro had accepted without consulting him first.

"They didn't say," Alessandro lied smoothly. In most cases, they would not, but in this one, the Records Keeper had wanted him warned before allowing him to accept the risk. His grandfather didn't need to know that. "They did say it was a newly emerging talent."

"Interesting," his mother said. "Not from one of the Houses, then?"

"No. He said it concerned the formation of a House."

"Upstarts and nobodies, then," his grandfather scoffed. "A waste of your time."

"The Records Keeper said they wanted the best antistasi in the world," Alessandro told him calmly, "and he called me. It speaks to our prestige. It is a good sign." His grandfather harrumphed again, and dropped the conversation entirely. Alessandro forced the tension out of his shoulders and pretended to not be very aware of the fashionably, riskily narrow band of his watch where it barely covered his soulmate mark.

There was dessert, because it was Christmas, but Alessandro in truth barely tasted it.

His resolution that it did not matter lasted until the next night. His oldest sister opened the door sometime well after midnight and said, "Sandro, what are you doing up still--" and then, upon finding him in bed with his laptop, shut the door and hissed, "What are you doing?"

"Research," he told her, because that much was apparent. If she'd thought he'd suddenly developed a taste for online gaming or something, she wouldn't have been mad about it.

"I thought you said you were leaving early for a favor to the Records Keeper in Texas."

"I am leaving early for a favor to the Texas Records Keeper," he said, and then actually looked up from his laptop to remind her, "If it were the other thing, you would know."

Her mouth pinched at that, and then she came and sat down at the end of his bed. "You think she was in the news recently, and that's why it has to be done in a rush over Christmas?"

"I still don't know why it has to be done in a rush over Christmas," he admitted, although that had been near the top of his list of concerns. "Her sister's the one that's been in the news, but that all seems to be sorted out now."

Her eyebrows shot up. "You found her already?"

"It wasn't hard. I had her name," he admitted. "I just didn't want to tell Grandfather."

She scoffed. "I doubt he would care anyway. She's just some nobody. Nobody important is from Texas."

"Some important people are from Texas," he corrected her, because he could not, he _could not_ tell her why their grandfather might actually have cared.

"True. Mad Rogan is from Texas." The most powerful telekinetic in the world was definitely _important_ , even before he'd leveled a couple of cities. Also, the man was a billionaire. If he'd had a sister, their grandfather would inevitably have tried to marry Alessandro to her, baiting the hook with a title and reeling in millions.

"And the sister runs around with Mad Rogan, so. There you go. Can you imagine if I showed up to a Trial trying to _network_?" He mock shuddered, and she smiled, and then he got distracted by his computer again: he'd found Catalina Baylor's social media accounts. It turned out she already followed him on Instagram, but, of course, so did everybody else. After a moment, he had his attention redirected by his sister grabbing his ankle under the blankets and giving it a shake.

"Go to sleep sometime."

"You, too," he told her. "Get back under your blankets, it's cold."

"It's always cold here," she agreed, and left, shutting the door behind her and leaving him alone with his thoughts and Catalina Baylor's well-curated Instagram. She was, it turned out, very pretty, dark haired, dark eyed, just the kind of girl Alessandro had always liked best. And she seemed to like tea a lot.

Probably a coincidence, he told himself. It was just a name. It meant nothing. Catalina Baylor probably did _not_ have 'Alessandro' on her wrist. If she did, she would probably have raised the issue to the Office of House Records, the way Alessandro really should have. She couldn't possibly have his reasons for keeping her mouth shut. And even if against all odds it did mean something...well. It couldn't be allowed to.

On a whim, he clicked 'follow' anyway.

By the time he woke the next morning, Catalina Baylor had deleted her Instagram entirely, a development he really wasn't sure how to take.

***

It almost seemed unfair that Catalina Baylor would only be considered a Prime if she could get through the defenses of the best antistasi on record, but Alessandro would never suborn the tests--at least, not any more than he was already doing by keeping his mouth shut about his mark, and it wasn't a _requirement_ to report a mark that might match. More like a suggestion, a very tentative one, given the culture of privacy surrounding soulmate marks in most Western countries. So he went into the testing hall intending to give it his all, and he did--and she sucker punched him.

He'd been expecting the voice, the deceptively gentle assault on his unparalleled defenses. He'd already known what she looked like. The subject matter of her chatter was...nothing special. Charming, a bit romantic, perhaps, but nothing special.

Nothing had prepared him for the goddamned _wings_.

Catalina Baylor was a Prime. That was that. Alessandro shook it off, got his walls back up and got to his feet, and she apologized for what she had had to do, looking more shocked that he'd pulled himself together than she had when he'd punched that guy in the face. He wondered how people usually reacted.

He spent the night first in meditation to make absolutely sure her magic was out of his brain, and then pacing his hotel room because he still couldn't get rid of the thought of her. In the morning, he went to the address he'd gleaned from his research, which turned out to be a warehouse of all things. He wanted to get to know her, to know if...he couldn't even think it. He didn't know what he would do if it turned out to be true. But he had to know.

Catalina Baylor turned out to be less confident that her magic was out of his brain, and therefore--quite reasonably, he supposed, from her point of view, if insanely frustrating from his--refused to speak to him beyond shouting from an upstairs window for him to go away. That he would feel differently later. That she wanted him to live a happy life.

What a novel concept.

He could not shout, in a public parking lot with half of Mad Rogan's private army watching in amusement from across the street, that he wanted to know if she was his soulmate. She would probably brush it off as more madness induced by her magic, and anyway then she called the police, so he really did have to leave. He had thought to try again later, but a lead on Arkan greeted him in his email, and he was out of Houston before nightfall. He didn't think about Catalina Baylor again for three years...except for when he did, except for when he woke from dreams of storms on the beach, of a hand trailing through water dotted with colorful little fish, of dark eyes and those _wings_...

It was not her magic. It was only her. But it could not be allowed to matter, so he refused to let it, right up until he strode into the Houston morgue and there she was.

***

Catalina only knew for sure that Alessandro was her soulmate when he told her about his fight with Arkan and his Primes, about how he had died but his magic wouldn't let him. About how he had thought about her face and thought that he would like to see her again, and had forced himself to crawl.

She knew, because she had felt it. She had felt him die, the crushing agony and grief everyone had always said it felt like, like someone had ripped her heart out of her chest and stomped on it. She had ripped her bracelet off and seen the mark faded grey, and watched with her heart in her throat as a few moments later the black bled back into it.

She had told no one. Her family had been walking on eggshells around her already; she hadn't wanted to add to their concern.

The thing was, her mark was illegible, the sort of signature developed by people who signed things a lot or who didn't care about soulmates. It definitely began with an A, and was long. That was all she'd ever been really sure of. That 'A' was bold, aggressive, and after that it more or less fell apart. She had, when she'd first developed her teenaged crush on the unobtainable playboy prince that was Alessandro Sagredo, half-convinced herself that it _could_ be 'Alessandro' in a careless autograph-ready scrawl--the second letter was probably an l, and that could definitely be a vague gesture toward an 'o' at the end--but she'd never really believed it.

(She had, once, in a fit of teenaged paranoia, snuck into the office in the middle of the night and picked the lock on a file cabinet to find their contract with MII and Augustine Montgomery's signature, just to be sure. Her feelings upon it definitely not being him had been decidedly mixed: on the one hand, she didn't _want_ her soulmate to be a cold-hearted businessman that much older than her, whose real looks she had no idea about. On the other, it definitely would have been convenient for her family, especially when that whole thing with Adam Pierce happened.)

When Alessandro had been summoned for her Trial, she said nothing, because what were the odds? When he turned back up in her life like a bad penny, once and then again, she brushed it off. It was coincidence and his own agenda. Certainly he had never given any indication that he had her name on _his_ wrist, and she knew her own signature to be perfectly clear, thank you very much.

But he had died, and she had felt it. He had died, and then he had decided to live so that he could see her again. He made it sound simple, but even if he wasn't her soulmate, that was so huge that she didn't know what to do with it.

In the parking lot of the America Tower, after Rogan's ex-cousin who was going to be an ex-person the next time Catalina saw him had laid all of Alessandro's secrets mercilessly bare to hurt them and had instead handed Catalina a miracle she hadn't dared to wish for, she finally managed to pull the words to her lips: "I think you're my soulmate." Alessandro's mouth formed the word, 'Yeah,' but no sound came out. "When did you know?"

"When I first saw you, it feels like. I thought maybe, all along, but I didn't really let myself know it until I--"

"Died," she finished, and he nodded. "I felt it. I didn't know it was you--"

"You didn't--"

"Well, your handwriting is impossible!" He laughed and kissed her again.

It was days before they realized they'd never actually compared their marks, never checked just to be sure. They were sure already; they hadn't had to see their names on each other's skin for that. They did look, of course, because they both wanted to see, but it only confirmed what they knew, what they would have known even without the marks: they belonged to each other, always had and always would.


End file.
